A surge in gang violence during a brutal summer spells trouble for the ruling parties.
A person dressed all in black hurled a hand grenade into a shop in the crime-ridden suburb of Geneta in the Swedish city of on Södertälje on July 22. Several bystanders were injured and one woman in her 50s had to be airlifted to the hospital.
Only a day later, a man was shot and injured on a street nearby.
The spate of gang violence is all part of a brutal summer that spells trouble for Sweden’s government.
Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson and his right-wing allies edged an election two years ago promising to end a decade of spiraling clashes between drug runners.
But the crime statistics make for chilling reading in a country of 10.5 million whose international image is one of a peaceful, successful nation with a competitive economy and strong welfare protections.
Yeah idk, I have family in Helsinborg. A car bomb outside elderly relatives flat - in a nice part of a nice town - someone shot dead in another relative’s street, the police station was attacked with a hand grenade… Last year when we arrived to visit a main shopping street was blocked off after a bombing in a flat. Yeah it’s still a nice country and I haven’t literally witnessed any of these incidents, but criminal violence honestly feels closer there than at home in London
I’m sorry that you had the experience all of that.
In Sweden there were 121 cases of violence with deadly outcome. There is around 10 million people living in Sweden.
Now, a grenade or a car bomb doesn’t mean that people are getting killed. Injured people wouldn’t end up among those 121 that did die in 2023. A bomb is always a great risk of people getting hurt and killed of course. Oh the 121 that died, 53 of those were shot and 41 got stabbed by knife.
With that said, I’m really sorry that you had to experience all of that you wrote but rest assured, your experience doesn’t represent the norm.
Hopefully we can get the shit to calm down like we did in the 90’s. Hells Angels were at war with Bandidos then. Bombs and shootings then too.
There were 103 murders in Greater London last year, which also has a population of just under 10 million and of course is a dense urban environment with a lot of inequality. Of those, 67 were stabbed and only 8 were shot.
Bomb/grenade attacks are almost unheard of in the UK, outside of terrorist incidents.
I don’t mean to attack Sweden which is an admirable country in many ways, and I wish the UK would adopt many of its policies. It’s precisely because it’s such a well run country that the increase in violent crime is so shocking